Hans Frankenthal

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Hans Frankenthal (born June 15, 1926 in Schmallenberg ; † December 22, 1999 in Dortmund ) was a German Holocaust survivor. Frankenthal survived the Auschwitz-Monowitz and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps and later advocated industrial compensation for the forced laborers .

Life

Hans Frankenthal was born in 1926 to Jewish parents, Adele and Max Frankenthal, who owned a butcher's shop and a cattle trade. The family lived in the small, almost exclusively Catholic village of Schmallenberg with around 2,200 inhabitants. Of these, 52 were Jews and 38 were Protestants. In his autobiographical notes “Refused Return. Experiences after the murder of the Jews ” reports Frankenthal that the family was fully integrated into the local community by 1933. The father was viceroy to the local rifle club in 1910 and was a soldier in the First World War . Like the majority, he was “nationally minded” and after the end of the war he played a key role in the construction of the local “war memorial”. Like many Schmallenbergers, Max Frankenthal always voted for the Catholic Center Party . Adele Frankenthal, who came from an Orthodox family and ran a strictly kosher household, took care of the numerous contacts with the Catholic environment.

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, this began to change rapidly. The young Frankenthal experienced first direct impressions of discrimination in 1935, when the Jewish children had to surrender their sports awards and were no longer allowed to use the sports field or swimming pool. In connection with the November pogrom in 1938 , the father was arrested, first transferred to the Dortmund police prison and then sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp for weeks . At home, the wives were forced to sell their property and consent to " Aryanization " at the same time . The ten Jewish families were then crammed into three houses. The attempt to leave the country failed when war broke out in 1939.

On March 1, 1943, Frankenthal and his family were deported from their homeland to the Auschwitz concentration camp . His parents were killed there, and he and his brother Ernst were taken to Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp . There medical tests were carried out on his teeth and he worked as a slave labor for IG Farben . On January 18, 1945, the prisoners from Auschwitz-Monowitz were sent on a death march , initially on foot and later by train to the west. Frankenthal came to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp and was used in the manufacture of the V2 rockets. In April he was sent on a transport to Theresienstadt , where the brothers were liberated by the Red Army .

He returned to his homeland in Schmallenberg and was shocked by the disbelief and denial of the Holocaust by his fellow citizens. In September 1948, Annie Labe married, and the couple had three children. Frankenthal subsequently worked as a butcher and cattle dealer and did not begin to talk about his fate again until 1982. Frankenthal was active in the International Auschwitz Committee and in the Jewish community of Hagen responsible for the Sauerland as vice chairman.

In the 1990s, he gained notoriety when he spoke several times at shareholder meetings of the liquidation company of IG Farben, where he described his experiences and demanded compensation for the former forced laborers. This regularly led to tumultuous scenes. Frankenthal was supported in his concern by the umbrella association of critical shareholders .

His book Refused Return , in which he tells his story, was published six months before his death at the age of 73 in December 1999.

Hans Frankenthal was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Eilpe .

Afterlife

As part of the artistic installation on the site in front of the IG Farben high-rise, the Norbert Wollheim Memorial shows a picture of the children of the brothers Ernst and Hans Frankenthal taken in 1927 on a photo board.

Hans Frankenthal Prize from the Auschwitz Committee Foundation

In memory of Hans Frankenthal, the Auschwitz Committee Foundation has awarded the Hans Frankenthal Prize once a year since 2010. This sponsorship award is given to groups, initiatives and institutions that, in the spirit of the Auschwitz Committee, do educational work against forgetting and against National Socialist and neo-fascist endeavors. The award is either intended to recognize a project that has already been carried out and to give the initiators the opportunity to carry out further projects of this type or to repeat the recognized project, or a planned project is to be made possible by awarding the sponsorship award.

Fonts

  • My life as a German of Jewish faith . In: Jewish life in the Hochsauerland. Fredeburg, 1994. pp. 207-251.
  • The Unwelcome One. Returning Home from Auschwitz . In collaboration with Andreas Plake, Babette Quinkert, and Florian Schmaltz. Translated from German by John A. Broadwin. Evanston, Ill .: Northwestern University Press (2002) ISBN 0-8101-1887-4
  • Refused return. Experiences after the murder of the Jews . New edition. With the collaboration of Babette Quinkert, Andreas Plake and Florian Schmaltz. Berlin: Metropol Verlag (2012) ISBN 978-3-86331-089-9
  • The journey of a Sauerland Jew from Schmallenberg to Auschwitz and back . In: Jan-Pieter Barbian ; Michael Brocke ; Ludger Heid (ed.): Jews in the Ruhr area. From the Age of Enlightenment to the present . Essen: Klartext, 1999, ISBN 3-88474-694-4 , pp. 195–209

literature

  • Erika Richter: Hans Frankenthal from Schmallenberg. A German of the Jewish faith reports on his life. In: Yearbook Hochsauerlandkreis . Vol. 2001, ISSN  0931-1149 , pp. 113-116.
  • detailed interview with Hans Frankenthal in: Olaf Arndt et al. (Ed.): Buna 4. Factory for synthetic rubber of IG Auschwitz and labor camp Monowitz / Auschwitz III (1940–45) . Internationalismus-Verlag, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-922218-62-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Mathews : "A tone like in Auschwitz". Two general meetings in 1999 determined by massive protests by critical shareholders , archive link ( memento of the original from August 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kritischeaktionaere.de
  2. ^ Photo of the Frankenthal brothers with a short biography
  3. ^ Website of the Auschwitz Committee Foundation for the Hans Frankenthal Prize
personal data
SURNAME Frankenthal, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Holocaust survivor
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Schmallenberg
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1999
Place of death Dortmund